Once upon a time there was a woman. The woman lived in a house surrounded by smoke. Every morning she would wake up, push back the coverlet and rush to the window. But there was nothing to see, only the great greyness pressing back against the window pane.

Gradually the woman stopped throwing back the covers with such delight. She stopped rushing to the window. Sometimes she didn’t even get out of her bed. The greyness seemed to ooze through the window and wrap its tentacles around her heart.

She tried to get rid of it, knowing it was making her breathless and sad.

First she went to the seaside and let the wind whistle through her bones and the sea pepper her hair and face with salt. But the greyness was afraid of the wind and clung tighter, squeezing her heart to the size of a walnut.

She returned home anxious and tired.

Perhaps I can find someone who knows about the greyness, she thought. Perhaps they will know how to make it go away or how I can find a new home for it.

The woman did all the visiting she could think of and drank more cups of tea and coffee than she had ever done in her life. But everyone seemed to have brought their own greyness. Some greynesses even had a smaller greyness in tow.

The woman ate a slice of Bakewell tart left over from one of the teas and pondered her problem.

There was one person left to visit but he lived so very far away.

She travelled for a very long time, over fields and mud and hills. Her little walnut heart made the journey a tiring one. Every sunset made the greyness squeeze tighter until she felt she might start crying and never stop.

Eventually she reached the bottom of the mountain where the man lived. She called up to him but the greyness in her chest was so tight she could only manage a whisper.

But the man had been waiting for her arrival. He saw her small and scrunched up at the foot of his mountain and hurried down to her.

Together they climbed, one step at a time, until at last she was sitting in his kitchen listening to him telling her all the stories he could think of. The words felt like a blanket he was weaving just for her and she and the greyness snuggled into them for warmth.

The woman and the man stayed together for many days, knitting word blankets and word cosies and word forts for each other.

Then one day the man beckoned the woman to the window.

The woman was nervous. The man lived so far up the mountain that his house was often inside a cloud. She was afraid that the cloud would bring more greyness into their lives.

Look, he said. You can see the trees through the mist.

She looked. He was right. Little shapes peered back at her, stretching and shining and waving.

The greyness was interested too. It had come to the woman to explore a world outside the grey soup but here was a whole world inside the soup, just waiting to be discovered.

Excitedly it uncoiled itself from the woman’s heart and flowed towards the window, oozing out through a tiny crack near the fastening and off into the new world.

The woman’s breathing deepened and she smiled warmly for the first time in months. The man smiled too, then he wrapped a cape of words around them both.

Remember how last week Ethan was stressing out because he didn’t keep Awful Nikki in her hospital bed and she caught fire as a result of being awful? Ethan is now beating himself up about that and setting the scene for a day of recriminations and overcaution.

Dr Lily is back this episode which is nice. If memory serves her last screen appearance involved the entire rest of the department finally telling her she was a jerk and that she had bullied one of her mentees. Holby and Casualty are full of strong women who occasionally tip into sociopathy. I salute them for it.

Anyway, Ethan is all I MUST NOT LET PEOPLE DOWN I MUST REMAIN VIGILANT AND DO ALL THE DOCTORING IN THE WORLD which is Casualty speak for “someone will die because of this”. Lily, who refused to take any time off following the death of her father, explains that staff welfare is important.

Oh lord. I had forgotten about Lofty wanting to get a promotion. Well, it’s interview day and A&E’s clumsiest, nicest nurse must convince everyone he is capable and not at all some kind of pudding in a man costume. Cue a guest appearance of the hospital CEO Henrik Hassen who is literally just there to arrange pencils and make Lofty nervous and remind people who stopped watching Holby City that he is still about.

I am annoyed about Lofty’s plotline. One, because it’s utterly obvious where this is going and that Lofty will rise to a challenge in some way and then get the job because SOAP OPERAS. Two, because back in the mists of time (last December or whenevs) peppy nurse Robyn Miller decided she was going to apply but also encouraged Lofty to go for it because she isn’t jealous etc etc. Her application instantly disappeared from the show’s consciousness and everything since has been about Lofty’s coming of professionalism story or whatever.

Spoiler: he rises to the challenge by manning an outdoor tent full of ill jerks because the hospital gets overloaded (the other local hospital has had to shut its doors). Lofty gets the job, Robyn hangs about trying to get people to put some money in a fund-raising bucket. She does, however, get a Taylor Swift reference into the episode.

In other irritations, Dixie is now getting flowers and longing looks from Jess [backstory for that here]. Jess is rebounding so hard from Awful Nikki that she might as well be on a relationship trampoline so the kiss they share at the end of the episode ends with Dixie saying “I can’t do this”. GOOD IDEA. STICK WITH THAT.

Back to Ethan. Charlie Fairhead is all “Well, he is probably reacting badly because of all that bad news you gave him about possibly having Huntington’s and also his mum not being his biological mum, isn’t he Cal?” Cal did not tell him any of these things.

YAY ZOE HANNA IS BACK! I love Zoe. She is a lovable mess who absolutely fucked her marriage to hospital porter Max into the bin what with sleeping with a rando on her hen night. Fun fact: The wedding then caught fire and exploded and Zoe nearly drowned in her own wedding dress (and also the local river) before Charlie saved her. Max is hanging about and is a bit jealous and exhibits clear symptoms of Maybe I Still Want You But I Am Not Sure And This Will Go On For A Long Time-Itis.

Cal eventually decides he must tell Ethan all of the bad news but not before Ethan has to provide care for a dying elderly lady (it’s actually a really moving part of the episode and I cried) and tries to be there for a suicidal patient. Unfortunately for the patient, “being there” involves having an audible conversation near the patient where he confesses that this diligence is because he still feels guilty over missing something with Awful Nikki.

The patient leaves and then accidentally causes a car crash involving some dithery guy who is having a major attack of MAYBE THE GRASS IS GREENER ELSEWHERE and his girlfriend (of whose grass he has grown weary). I do not have much sympathy for this dude. But it’s okay! Apparently his girlfriend being in a life-endangering situation means he has realised she is the one for him. Romance.

Actually, Ethan saves her so his day isn’t all bad. Alas he ruins it all by going to tell Lily she isn’t “the pariah of the department” as she contemplates a body. The body is that of the man from earlier and Ethan does not take this well.

In other news Louise has a go at a patient and sticks up for the NHS thus getting him to change his ways and donate to the hospital fund-raising effort.

Holby City

Mr Hanssen must decide whether to fight for the CEO-ship of Holby or go see his family in Sweden. The choice comes about because Guy Self is a narcissistic maniac and wants the job back. He’s wandering round doing shady deals and offering Ric Griffin shiny new medical equipment to try and get the support he needs to stage a coup. He has also started parking in Hanssen’s space.

I really do feel like as hospital coups go this one has been kind of rushed. It only really picked up pace the last week or so and now it’s all THERE IS A FIGHT FOR THE HOSPITAL AND PROBABLY ALSO THE CORE VALUES OF THE NHS BECAUSE HANSSEN IS ACTUALLY NICE AND GUY SELF IS AWFUL.

The whole thing revolves around Hanssen deciding what his priorities are and he sort of nibbles away at a number of the sideplots, making appearances and dispensing advice or prompting shifts in other people’s behaviour. For example, the ridiculously awkward family party that Sacha is trying to get his fiance Essie to attend. It is awkward because Sacha’s family is Jewish and Essie’s grandad is an escaped Nazi war criminal.

He also tells Arthur to write a paper for publication, tells Jac Naylor to come up with an R&D proposal to rival Guy Self’s neuro-lab of coolness and gets deeply involved in the case of a guy he finds outside the hospital. “I reckon fifty people walked past me outside without even seeing I was there, so thanks,” says the guy. The guy also calls Hanssen the BFG for a while.

Here is Serena “enjoying” some shortbread made by Arthur Digby. Morven later puts the shortbread in the clinical waste disposal.

Morven spends the episode making up Shakespearean-inspired research paper puns. Did I mention that I love Morven?

Anyway, the return of a balloon model-making patient pisses Jac off. Jac hates balloons either because they’re fun and Jac is not into fun or because of her time in the children’s home. It could be either but she tells underling Olly Valentine the latter and he shuts up about it.

“If it comes near me I will stick a pin in it. And that goes for the balloon too,” she tells the patient. She does later stick a pin in each and every one of his balloon animals. After picking through Professor Elliot Hope’s old stent research and discovering that even tedious balloon men have feelings Jac decides to fight for that cardiothorassic R&D money using a balloon-based stent project inspired by the very thing she hates and using balloon man as a case study.

Hanssen has also remembered it’s the anniversary of Nurse Fletcher’s wife’s death, worked out the life history and medical and emotional sufferings of his patient, coached Sacha towards some kind of awful party resolution, prompted Arthur’s return to Keller Ward from AAU and decided to prioritise Holby over his family. So… yay? Yay for everyone except his Swedish family.

Look, I just ordered a salad because it is a hot day except the salad ended up consisting mainly of runner beans and they are really long and complicated so I started not cutting them up because no-one was watching but then some of them ended up sticking out of my mouth at weird angles and then a woman started laughing at me and I felt like a weird bird being outfoxed by a worm and now I can’t finish my salad because of the scrutiny and I need to deal with the fact I now have peanut sauce up the side of my face.

That is why I am leaving London.

It is only for the weekend. Hopefully everyone will have forgotten about this incident on Monday.

Once upon a time (a year or two ago), I was a single lady with a press pass for a wedding fair. I wrote a heap of anecdotes from the show into a Google doc but they never found a home in an article so here are five of them…

—– THE DRESS —–

“Oh, I’ve actually been a lot more naked than this for work.”

There is a pause while the dress fitter and I digest the latest thing I shouldn’t have said out loud during the wedding fair. I have to quickly explain about a waxing feature I did for a website once.

I am halfway into a traditional wedding dress. In case you’ve never had the joy of that experience, remember when Han Solo was flash-frozen in carbonite? I imagine it’s almost exactly like that except the carbonite has been replaced with silk, certain types of bra are out of the question and Darth Vader expects you to look radiant.

Then you add heels.

—– THE CAKE —–

“Are these real cakes?”

I am bending over next to a cake stand trying to do the culinary equivalent of looking up its skirt. I was lured over by the promise of icing before remembering (please do not ask how I know this) that demonstration cakes are often just polystyrene blocks covered in sugarpaste. The upskirt has yielded glimpse of neither sponge nor fruit and this is a massive concern.

“No.”

I draw a complete blank at this point. What do I say to a cake seller who has no real cakes? How does one assess him?

“Is there marmalade?”

I have panicked. I remember using marmalade to help stick the marzipan to a Christmas cake once. Perhaps I should have asked about the marzipan situation instead.

He looks at me strangely.

I think I remember seeing some small hotel breakfast-sized portions of jam in one of the cafes around the periphery of the showspace. The man seems to be getting exasperated with me for some reason so I instinctively decide to try and help him.

“I think there’s some jam…”

He turns away from me decisively and smiles at a real bride-to-be.

—– THE CAR —–

“Basically, keep your legs together.”

A model is explaining to me how you get in and out of a car gracefully in a wedding dress. And by “gracefully” I mean “while not familiarising your wedding party with your waxing arrangements”.

Her advice reminds me of a thinly-veiled lecture our head of sixth form once gave during an assembly about the dangers of spending lunchtimes in cars with boys. It seems that no matter how old you get the advice stays the same.

Boys. Cars. Knees together. Well done, you are a lady.

“And make sure you sort of ease yourself in backwards.”

My mind is instantly somewhere entirely inappropriate.

—– THE CATCH —–

“Someone was saying earlier that a wedding fair is actually a good place to pick up a guy.”

This unexpected piece of information comes as I confess to a lady manning a decoration stand that I am not a bride-to-be.

I suppose it makes a perverse kind of sense – a man at a wedding fair is demonstrably not entirely wedding-phobic. However, despite this excellent point, I can’t help questioning the overall thrust of the logic. Would he not be there planning his big day with someone else?

But then a darker possibility presents itself. Maybe he comes to wedding fairs for fun. And by also being at a wedding fair he would think you were also a fan of wedding fairs. Then you would be expected to participate in his hobby, poring over issues of bridal magazines which thump onto the doormat month after month and attending a never-ending stream of wedding fairs? The future is suddenly awash with pastel-coloured Pinterest boards and opportunities to care about ribbon.

“I think perhaps this man would be a Not Very Good option.”

—– THE DRESS PT 2: THE DRESSENING—–

“Do you like it?”

I am standing in front of a mirror wearing a green slip dress over which the assistant has lowered a lace layer.

“It is beautiful.”

I’m not lying, it is beautiful, but I’m not having a transformative Moment, What has actually happened is I have accidentally immersed myself in wedding – swamped myself in it, in fact, as I’m a good foot shorter than the person for whom sample sizes are made.

After I head back into the changing room I try to picture myself at a wedding. A wedding involving this dress. Any wedding. Someone else’s wedding. A play in which there is a wedding. An island of weddings. With dinosaurs, like Jurassic Park.

This leads to a few minutes of pretending to be a combination of a T-rex and Godzilla until the assistant lady asks if “everything’s alright in there?”

I emerge wearing my jeans, tshirt and backpack.

“That one is £2,000,” says the assistant.

I do not blink.

This is because I am currently pretending to be a bride-to-be who doesn’t react to high prices. Certainly not by surprised blinking. But I realise that having committed to not blinking I am unsure when to start again. My eyeballs start to feel chilly and the assistant seems concerned.

Dota 2 is my most-played game ever. I have poured more than a thousand hours into it, made some great friends and I like spending snippets of whatever grownups call pocket money on little wizard hats and capes.

When the magical digital wizard booklet known as the Compendium was announced for 2014 I picked one up as soon as possible. A quarter of the proceeds go to The International 4 prize fund with the rest going to Valve. I like the idea of contributing to a tournament I enjoy and to players from whom I have learned a lot. Similarly, Valve’s input is cool. Reaching stretch goals means the team create items, a new game mode, different types of customisation – some of the rewards will benefit all Dota 2 players, even those who didn’t pick up a Compendium.

Today was the day for delivering the Immortal Treasures.

Last year’s Compendium Immortals were problematic because there was a clear disparity in terms of their value. Some were for popular heroes and had supercool animations, some were for less popular heroes and didn’t really deliver on the animations front either. As Chris puts it on Three Lane Highway, it was possible to feel like you’d lost.

This year is far better in that respect – the items are cool, the chest system has been changed so that with multiple chests you’re not risking doubling up on an item you’ve already received and there’s a chance for earning some ace rares. Indeed, I haven’t spoken to anyone who’s been disappointed. Except for me.

“Once the Immortal Treasure stretch goal is reached, you’ll receive an extra Immortal Treasure every 10 levels. Each time you open a treasure, you will find a different item, with a chance to get an exceptionally rare item.”

That’s the way this year’s Immortals work.

I’ve bought my Compendium and been enjoying leveling it up naturally, playing games and completing the tasks the booklet sets in order to gain points. I’m at level 7 at the moment and thus was entitled to one Immortal Treasure box. I opened it while on voice chat with friends as we queued for a game. “What did you get?!” was the question everyone was asking one another. I got a tail for Puck. It’s a lovely item but the character just isn’t one I play. Instantly I started thinking about the people I play with who pick Puck often and who I could gift it to.

I love that aspect of Dota – giving someone an unexpected present just because you know they love playing that hero. It’s a really nice feeling. In fact when I was waiting for the chest to open I was running through which items I’d love and keep and strut up and down the lanes with for months and months and which ones would be heading to other people’s armories for them to do the same.

But everyone else who was excited about the Immortals had received multiple drops. I realised I was the only person there who hadn’t spent extra money leveling up by buying extra points and, as the conversations continue, was acutely aware of how many cool items I was missing out on by not spending money. This is the first time I’ve felt that by not spending money I was having a less enjoyable experience than other people in Dota 2.

By spending the cost of another Compendium you can gain 24 levels on your current Compendium. That does things like affecting the rate at which you earn levels and items for your Dota profile. But what it also does is earn you at least two extra Immortal Treasure drops. Three in my case as I’m already on level 7. I guess looking at it like that made me feel silly for watching my level grow through meeting the booklet’s challenges and things. Like, I was doing it wrong and missing out by not just dropping another six quid into the pot.

I still have the Puck tail too. Like I said before, I was going to give it to someone I know who plays the character a lot. Thing is, he’s spent roughly three times more than I have on the Compendium – nudging towards the £20 mark – and so when I asked what he’d got in his Immortal drops the answer was “everything”.

The Dota 2 treasure system has improved so much since last year, it really has. But the feeling of missing out because I simply hadn’t spent enough money is not one I’ve associated with Dota 2 at all. Having it flash up during a moment I was excited about was unexpected and unpleasant, and then again when I was trying to decide what to do with the item. I want the cool items but they now they feel more like a set of toys you buy outright rather than having an element of reward or socialising to them. I could still spend the extra money – I’d prefer that to using the marketplace, I think – it’s just that I no longer feel good about it.

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